Why a Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover would be all kinds of wrong

Whatever Doctor Who and Sherlock show runner Steven Moffatt says, a Doctor Who and Sherlock crossover is a really bad idea.

It might save him a stack of time as a script writer but by the end of it we’d be left even more hungry. Or even exceptionally disappointed.

It’s just wrong. It’s like when you love someone (and we won’t go too far down this analogy) and you love someone else too. You might want them to meet, you might want them to get on, imagine the larks. But no. No. It never works like that. They will basically hate each other.

In an interview, The Moff has said he’s not against the idea. But those around him are: ‘Go speak to Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Mark Gatiss and Sue Vertue, OK? They’re all in the way. I’m not the killjoy, it’s that lot. It’s probably not going to happen.’

The two titans are very similar. No. More than that. Basically exactly the same. Even down to their crap way with feelings, eccentric dress and superhuman intellects. They can’t work with lesser beings let alone an equal.

And Gatiss nails it. The Moff says in the interview: ‘You know in some ways, I think Mark [Gatiss] has got a point when he says that however good you imagine [the crossover], it would be almost better in your imagination than it would be if the two grand old egotists actually met. They’d just both go off in opposite corners and sulk that there was someone cleverer than them.’

The good old intermingling of two fiction universes is a good thing in comedy, it’s fabulous in fan fiction and it’s a lovely everyday fantasy. But has there ever been a truly great example of it in canonical serious sci-fi/fantasy?

I can’t think of an example. It’s the stuff of fan dreams and best it stays there.

One of the finest adventures of Tom Baker’s time as the Doctor back in the 1970s was the Victorian noir adventure The Talons of Weng Chiang. Despite a few futuristic elements it couldn’t be more clearly Holmesian if it tried, with the Doctor careering around the dark streets in a tweed cape and deerstalker hat.

And the ever industrious and loving fans have been busy too over the years putting together their fun crossover tableaux on YouTube too. And they’re good. Brilliant. And that’s exactly as it should stay.

It’s a fun idea. But I don’t ever want it to be official.

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